en:visioning christianity lived // a blog by christian scharen

February 23, 2009

U2's amazing song, 'White as Snow' from NLOTH

Oh, well, I guess I won't apologize for the posts on U2. Skip them if you are not a fan. I was presenting yesterday on worship, culture and congregational change at a church caught between a traditional worship in the sanctuary and a contemporary service in the gym. I offered, in the end, models of blending and arguments about Christian maturity. If we don't do that, we allow culture values like authenticity (it has to 'ring true' to me) and choice (iWorship) to reign. We lose Jesus' call to love the stranger, the enemy, those in the 'other' style worship service. Case in point, I said: the new U2 album has a haunting and moving song titled 'White as Snow'. Sean O'Hagen has a wonderful post about the song:

"There are a couple of songs from the point of view of an active
soldier in Afghanistan," Bono told me back in June 2008, at the group's
Hanover Quay studio in Dublin, during a break in recording, "and one of
them, White As Snow, lasts the length of time it takes him to die".

Of
all the character songs on the album, White As Snow is the most moving.
Much of this is to do with its sense of quietude – not a mood one
normally associates with U2. The song is almost ambient in its musical
pulse, suggesting the presence of Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno, and
Bono's voice sounds markedly different here, more restrained, more
plaintive, the emotion suggested rather than strained for.

The
song's melody is based on an old hymn, Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel,
that, according to The Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal, was composed by
"an unknown author, circa 1100".

I love it! A English rock critic quoting the Handbook to the Lutheran Hymnal! I told this congregation, well, how can we expect our youth to properly listen to pop music when the pop music is more complex than their own worship experience? How will they know Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel if they've only ever sung 'Awesome God"? As a song, White as Snow most reminds me of "Running to Stand Still," from 1987's The Joshua Tree, which is an amazing song about addiction to heroin, again a song about a person Bono knew of in Dublin, an imagined life of brokenness, the thoughts inside the head and the cry of that person.